Particular embodiments generally relate to a threshold driven comparator.
Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Comparators may be used to compare an input voltage with a reference voltage. The output of the comparator indicates which of the input voltage and the reference voltage is larger or smaller. When multiple thresholds are being compared, a comparator is used to compare each threshold.
Pipelined ADCs may be used to convert an analog signal to a digital signal. A pipelined ADC includes a number of stages that each resolve a portion of bits for an N bit digital value of the digital signal. Each stage requires a number of comparators where more comparators are needed per stage as the number of bits being resolved increases. For example, if 1.5 bits are being resolved per stage, 2 comparators are needed, and if 2.5 bits are being resolved per stage, 6 comparators are needed. The comparators that are needed use area on an integrated circuit (IC) chip and also cause power loss.